PARODESI | Tale of a Trafficked Bride
Suman (name changed) was trafficked from Kolkata city to a village in Haryana state to be married to a man. With the sex ratio of 911 females per 1000 males, as per the National Family Health Survey-5 (2020-2021), Haryana has more than 130,000 trafficked brides who come from impoverished parts of India.
DINNER WITH THE KAURS | Conversation with a Sikh Family
Nirmal Kaur, a Sikh woman, was just 13 years old when she witnessed her father?s killing during an anti-Sikh massacre in 1984 after the then Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her two Sikh bodyguards. Thirty-eight years later, the Kaurs continue to fight for justice.
DINNER WITH THE KERKETTAS | Conversation with a Tribal Christian Family
Reena Kerketta, one of India’s 6.6 million tribal Christians, is recovering from a severe head injury she sustained after an attack in her home in the tribal-majority Khunti district in the eastern state of Jharkhand. Host Harshita Rathore visits the Kerkettas to explore what identity-based discrimination …
UNHEARD ECHOES
Duka Devi is nearly 100 years old but her activist spirit appears to be as youthful as it must have been during the ?Chipko? movement she was part of decades ago. In that agitation in Raini village in Uttarakhand state?s Chamoli district in the 1970s, women from the Bhotia indigenous community hugged trees and offered to be shot by loggers, successfully preventing fell of trees.
LEOPARD IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD
Sarveshwar Prasad?s family is among the very few people in his village in northern India?s Uttarakhand state who have not migrated away out of fear of leopards. These wild cats are often seen wandering in residential areas in the state?s Pauri Garhwal district and sometimes mauling humans, even to death.
DINNER WITH JATAVS
Jawahar Singh Jatav, one of the more than 160 million Dalit people in India, is still recovering from his injuries after he and his family were attacked for drinking water from a tap inside a temple in Rajasthan state?s Bharatpur area. Host Harshita Rathore visits the Jatavs…
SILIGURI
Host Mariya Rajan's quick visit to three hamlets near lush green tea gardens in Siliguri city and surrounding areas reveal that at least one child has gone "missing" in each of them. Was it just a coincidence, or is something changing in that region - which, being a gateway to the northeast India as well as the neighbouring countries …
SEX TRAFFICKING IN MUMBAI
Shama (name changed) and her underage daughter are brought from West Bengal state to Mumbai city by human traffickers with the promise of a job. Soon they find themselves in separate brothels. Their stories reflect what many of the more than 1,600 girls and women in Mumbai …
A CRY FOR DIGNITY | Punjab’s Dalit Christians Speak Out
Kamal Masih, a lawyer practising in a region near India’s border with Pakistan, has represented many victims of discrimination and violence against Dalit Christians in Punjab state. However, Hindu nationalists claim that Christians seek to convert Dalits by offering monetary benefits.
WHY ARE MINORITIES ATTACKED IN INDIA
About 200 people barged into a church in Roorkee city’s Solanipuram area in Uttarakhand state on Oct. 3, vandalised its property and beat up Christians, including women. When the Christians filed a police plaint, three people lodged a counter complaint alleging that workers of the church …
DINNER WITH KAWS | Conversation with a Kashmiri Pandit Family
Fleeing Kashmir in 1990, as over 70,000 other families did under threat from violence by Islamist militants, the Kaw family resettled in the northern India but they still miss their home. Host Harshita Rathore explores what identity-based discrimination and violence do to the minds and hearts of members of a community.
WOMEN RISE UP | No Marriage Before 21
Women from rural India assemble in a village in the north Indian state of Haryana to take an oath, and declare, that they will not marry, or allow other women in their families to do so, before they are 21 years old. Could this be the beginning of a revolution among the country’s women?
LIVES ON FIRE | Jharkhand State’s Underground Fire
A seven-year-old girl witnesses her mother’s death after a portion of land caves in, burying her under debris in Jharia coalfields in India's Jharkhand state, where an underground fire has been raging for over 100 years due to unscientific mining. The girl's father, Dilip Bauri, recalls the incident …
LONG WALK TO WATER
Series host Mariya Rajan goes for an arduous walk on the mountains of Almora district of Uttarakhand state with a local resident, Janaki Devi, who fetches water three times a day from the nearest stream that is kilometres away.
IN THE GUISE OF LOVE
Shaheen (not her real name) is one of many women in West Bengal state?s Murshidabad district who believe that when men propose for marriage, they do so out of true love, not knowing that it could be mere pretence of love being used by human traffickers to sell them for labour or sex, or both.
West Bengal’s Submerged Villages
Millions of people in India’s West Bengal state have been facing the brunt of meandering rivers for years. Over the last decade, entire villages living on ?Charlands? ? river islands that emerge as a result of a river changing its path’s have had to move to nearby patches of land for up to 16 times.
KASHMIRIYAT FRACTURED
Three decades after his brutal displacement, Rajinder Koul Premi, a Hindu from Kashmir, is still looking for answers, especially what led to the collapse of the region?s syncretic society? Will he get the answers? Will he be able to reconcile with the loss?
LONG WALK TO SCHOOL
Nikita Mehra treks for half an hour every day to reach the nearest road above her house in Almora district of the northern state of Uttarakhand, only to walk six more kilometres to attend school. Many other girls, however, have dropped out of school due to safety concerns.
WHY ARE UNIVERSITIES UNDER ATTACK
Prof. Apoorvanand from Delhi University speaks to Newsreel Asia’s Asad Ashraf on the idea of university and why and how universities are under attack in India.